Launch on Warning

Military strategy that allows commanders to order nuclear strikes against an opponent as soon as warning sensors indicate the presence of an incoming enemy missile but before that missile actually strikes its target. Both the advantages and the disadvantages of the launch-on-warning strategy are quite serious. Should an enemy attempt to send nuclear missiles to destroy another nation's missiles, the launch-on-warning (LOW) strategy would allow the targeted nation to launch its missiles before their silos are hit. However, the strategy does not take into consideration the potential for false alarms—a glitch in the radar software or a human error in interpreting data might not be caught in time to avoid a retaliatory nuclear strike without real enemy provocation.

Safeguarding Missiles

The United States has never officially endorsed the launch-on-warning strategy, because of its potentially catastrophic effects. The concept, however, has been considered and debated by the Pentagon, Congress, and the White House, with a considerable number of people contending that U.S. nuclear strategy is indeed predicated on LOW, despite its evident drawbacks.

As soon as the Soviet Union began producing large numbers of nuclear missiles in the early 1950s, the U.S. military establishment sought to develop strategies that would allow the United States to target Soviet nuclear facilities and nuclear delivery systems. The Soviets, of course, followed suit, and by 1960, both countries had missiles aimed at each other's nuclear silos.

A frightening scenario was then born in the minds of military strategists on both sides: should the enemy launch a first nuclear strike, it would be possible to destroy all of the opponent's missiles in a matter of minutes, thereby preventing the possibility of an equivalent counterattack. One response to this security dilemma was the launch-on-warning strategy. Even if enemy missiles were aimed at one's nuclear rockets, the enemy would not be able to reach them before they were safely launched.

The Potential for False Alerts

The major drawback of launch on warning is the potential for acting decisively (that is, launching nuclear missiles) based on faulty data. Even the most advanced early-warning technology allows commanders only 20 minutes, at best, to be informed of an incoming missile, transmit the order to launch a counterstrike, and then carry out the attack. That limited time period does not allow for extensive verification and confirmation of the existence of an incoming missile, thus leaving the door open for catastrophic mistakes.

[Page 424]Although sensitive nuclear-related information is kept highly classified by the U.S. military and the government, several false alerts are widely believed to have occurred on both sides during the Cold War. Fortunately, nuclear missiles were not launched as a result of these alerts, which would indicate that LOW was not the bedrock of either American or Soviet nuclear strategy.

To the present day, however, Russia and the United States each continue to maintain more than 2,000 nuclear warheads ready to be deployed “on warning”—that is, before an incoming enemy missile could actually reach its target. The potential for a nuclear disaster unleashed because of a mistake still exists, therefore, more than a decade after the end of the Cold War.

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